I wake up and dimly remember that it was a good idea to go back to the Wats in the morning as you'd get the sun shining on the entrances. Getting up isn't so easy and I seem to be quite thirsty. Eventually we're out at 10 and moving sluggishly back to some of the Wats of yesterday. The first one is Wat Chiang Man which was built by the two kings who subsequently built the city. It also allegedly houses the crystal image of Buddha. Seeing other tourists we bravely venture in to find the Wats are large halls, righly decorated with a statue (image) of Buddha at the end with some ornate pagoda thing sat behind. Not wanting to sound too sacreligeous but to me the image of Buddha is that of a woman. We pop into the building -- like a smaller hall -- to the right which has iron bars and padlocks and stuff around the pagoda. Peering in you can see two very small images -- about 6 inches high -- one of which is, presumably, the crystal Buddha. Though you're not to know.
We wander across town and take in another couple of Wats. Quite often there is a small hall at the back which is either newer in all cases or kept much better and a little more brilliant. A Wat outbuilding, probably in Chiang Man. A Wat outbuilding A Wat. At Wat Phra Singh the main hall contains quite a big Buddha image, more like what you expect that the statue dwarfs the men around it and in a side hall it has some paintings on the side walls of some antiquity though I couldn't work out what. The sign said built in "B.E. 700" which could mean anything and more so given that it's the year 2546 in Thailand (reading the book suggests it might be 1846 years old).
We retired over the road for lunch where I guzzled two drinks before my exceedingly spicy meal turned up. Ouch, hot! Then back to the room to cool down. For tea we decided on the Italian over the road, a bit different to the standard fare, Helen's feeling under the weather and I fancy a bit of pepper steak.
With Helen packed off to bed to sleep off her cold -- or invigorate her flu -- I went over the road to the Internet shop promising both memory card readers and CD burns. Combine the two and I'll have an offline backup of my website pictures. Sadly, with the last CD-R in the shop the woman -- so slim her body depth, spine to stomach, wasn't much more than the diameter of my forearm -- produced a 206MB audio track that caused every CD player to hang. This is the best part of an hour after the promised half hour required.
I phoned Jan and Graham to find out the latest [about my nephews] which is that young Davie is a bit of a bionic kid [Graham's description is a Borg], two days home from a five week stint in hospital. He has a hypo-cath(?) to aid drug administration and a shunt to drain gunk from his head to his stomach cavity. Graham reports that he's becoming himself again though no-one can say what the side-effects of the "spontaneous bleed" in his head are yet.
I stumbled off to the bar seeking solace in the non-happenings in Iraq. If I were a British or US commander in a war involving tens if not hundreds of thousands of troops on each side I'd be extremely embarrassed that the media scoop was twelve or six Iraqis surrendering. Surely we expect blocks of a thousand laying down their arms? Never mind, my low beer diet after only three beers this evening I'm tipsy drunk.
Home Place Hotel, Chiang Mai N18.78697 E98.99442 Elev. 292m Home Place Hotel, Chiang Mai
Copyright 2003 Ian Fitchet. All rights reserved.
